The experience of schooling

That is how schooling experience felt in the last half of the 1970s. The school system was less tolerant of anything coming outside itself . The school even changed the names of our parents and grandparents gave us and replaced them with its own preferred names. An acquaintance of mine told me the other time that she first stepped into the school grounds as Shirley and reluctantly walked out of the school as Sheilah. The teachers told her in no uncertain terms that there was nothing like Shirley.

At the time, if the teachers, the undisputed fountain of knowledge, did not know something, it meant it did not exist. My family was not spared either. My grandfather was born and known as Osia and when my elderly siblings began their primary education, the school altered the name to Hosia, to align with one of the biblical minor prophets. The goal of Christianising our traditional names was clear and undisguised. My father waged a spirited battle against an assault on his father’s name but to no avail.